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A Clean Slate- A Blank Page

Just as I suspected, this “new” morning of a new year seems very much like any other morning. I awoke at 4am to the familiar sound of my cat knocking a magazine off the dresser. I snuggled under the electric blanket for a few more minutes and then slipped on my fuzzy robe and furry slippers and shuffled off to the kitchen to make coffee and feed the critters.

Now I’m sitting here trying to fill a blank page with some sort of wit or wisdom that will be entertaining or enlightening- same old woman, same old routine. However, there are already subtle changes occurring:

My shuffling gait was a little easier this morning. Perhaps my four sessions on the treadmill are already producing some changes in my body.

I read a few passages from Proverbs before I started my day. In the past I’ve kept a Bible next to my living room chair and next to my bed and even in the kitchen in hopes that I would be more diligent in my daily reading of it. This year I’ve placed my favorite translation, The NIV Women’s Devotional Bible next to my computer. Perhaps this will be the year when I read from it every day.

Katrina created a new banner for me and I changed the colors of my blog. I also saved this page to a new folder: Blogs 2010.

So the new year begins.

We embrace the idea of a new year, a clean slate, a blank page on which to write a new chapter of our lives because there is always something not quite right about what we are doing or how we are doing it. No matter how we hard we try we will never reach perfection, but that doesn’t stop us from striving toward the goal. So each year we put past failures behind us and start over.

The idea of starting over is not a foolish one by any means. The Bible tells us that Jesus forgives our sins and gives us a new start. We know from experience that the consequences of those sins aren’t erased or eliminated from our lives. We don’t lose our scars or erase our memories of what we have done. But we move forward knowing that they are no longer a mark against us. The score is back to zero and we have a chance to do try again. We learn from our mistakes.

So today may not be that different from yesterday, but if I can make a few tiny changes here and there then maybe, just maybe, my actions will be different and my results will be different and I will be different when 2011 arrives.

Comments

Your new heading on your blog looks great with the pictures you have taken. Yes, a new year! It's hard to believe how fast time goes. When you set the microwave for ten minutes and you watch it click off, you realize how quickly time is going. That reminds me that I need to get busy with family pictures because when I'm gone, the rest of the family, may not know who those "old people" are, namely my parents, grandparents and aunt's family pictures. That is one of my goals for this year. Have a wonderful year, Mary and Gary.